The present invention relates to a mail address reading apparatus and a mail sorting apparatus for reading a zip code, an address, and an addressee name written on the surface of a piece of mail, and determining a destination based on the read results.
In a field of processing mail, a great deal of mail collected everyday must be processed in a limited time. Therefore, mail services have been mechanized to lighten the loads on post-office clerks.
For example, zip codes on pieces of mail are read by an optical character reader (OCR). The pieces of mail are sorted by a dispatching sorter into sections corresponding to delivery post offices based on the read results. Further, the addresses on the mail are read and the pieces of mail are sorted into a plurality of delivery sections by a delivery sorter.
Recent delivery sorters can read detailed information, such as lot numbers, house numbers, room numbers of apartment houses, and names of addressees. Further, dispatching sorters can specify the towns of addresses by reading the zip codes. A delivery sorter reads a street or avenue number, a house number and a building name of the address by character recognition. Further, it reads the name of the addressee also by character recognition.
When the zip code and the address are printed by a printer or the like, characters can be read by an OCR relatively accurately. However, in general, an OCR cannot easily recognize handwritten characters. In particular, handwritten Chinese and Arabic numerals are difficult to recognize. For example, FIG. 2, columns (a) and (b) show handwritten Arabic numerals "2" and "3", which are difficult to distinguish even by human eyes. Similarly, the numerals in the columns (c) and (d) are intended to be Arabic numerals "4" and "9", but they are very similar and hardly distinguished.
If the above-mentioned handwritten numerals are used in a zip code, a very highly-developed character recognition process must be used to recognize them. In this case, a considerable time is required for the recognition and there is no guarantee that the result of the recognition is correct. Further, if a street or avenue number and a house number are handwritten, the same problem may arise.